Chapter Text
There was something odd about time in the Lighthouse. Worries that would normally sneak up at night could strike any time of the day, without knowing exactly when that time was. Rook didn't know the time. All she knew was that her monthly cycle was late. Well, not late. Not yet. There was a rhythm to these things: not a month or before, it had arrived earlier than expected when she was already armpit deep in gore. The fact it was a few days late this time around was nothing to worry about. Not even knowing that she and Lucanis and gone and done something that might, well, complicate matters. She'd allow herself to be concerned after a week. Maybe two…? Damn it. She chewed the side of her thumb anyway and shoved everything down further than the Oracle at Kal-Sharok.
In the kitchen, a full requisition was arranged on the table. Anything even part-empty had been refilled. All the pots were scrubbed and shining. Yet another bag of onions lay propped near the pantry door - although it really was a mystery what kept happening to them. Notebook and quill in hand, Bellara tottered along behind Lucanis as he walked her through everything, as if he didn't know how long his mission from Caterina would keep him away. Bellara was more than capable of handling it, but still her expression brightened when she saw Rook on the other side of the room.
"Really, Lucanis, you don't need to worry…" she had been saying, then, "Oh! Rook will help, won't you? We managed before…"
"You were eating like solteros before I—" Lucanis muttered, but his lips softened into a wistful smile and he shook his head. It felt so long ago. They had been through so much since. Their eyes met over the provisions. "Of course, Rook may help. Whenever you can buy some fresh meat, I have all the spices, vinegar, some good oil—"
For the one dish that he knew she could cook. Something she'd grown up knowing as simply stew, with a sour, savoury, pepper-heavy profile that had offended Harding's Fereldan grandparents from beyond the Veil the first time she'd served it at the Lighthouse. Apparently, stew's only defining characteristic was to taste 'brown'. A flush rose to Rook's cheeks with the knowledge that Lucanis not only remembered the event, but considered her likely to orchestrate its success a second time. The master of the kitchen, in their relationship, she was not. She walked around to the stove area beneath the stairs and greeted her lover properly, with a soft kiss on the cheek.
"I've been thinking I could probably make it work with some potatoes and squash, for Emmrich," she suggested. "Not for four hours, though."
"Not for four hours," Lucanis agreed. His moustache was freshly trimmed and balm-scented against her skin, as if he wanted to make a particularly good impression on his departure. "They should take the flavour well."
"Oh, you two are so sweet," Bellara uttered almost to herself. Rook was sure she heard her scribble something else in her book before giving them some space, wandering off to the other end of the table to start her plan from there.
There was a moment, then, when it was just the two of them alone. Three, if Rook's growing sense of Spite's presence was to be believed. Nearby, and—
"Aradia?" Rook's full name on Lucanis' lips, his fingers around her left wrist, caught her attention. "Is everything alright? Spite thinks you - si, I am telling her! - Spite thinks you smell a little nervous, and your hair on one side—" was twisted, where Rook had a habit of twirling it around her fingers to de-stress. She brought her right hand up to touch the clump of curls, which had formed more of a ringlet, and teased them back apart.
"Oh, it's just everything," she said lightly, to dismiss it, and it wasn't a lie. There was so much going on, between the gods and the Venatori, the Antaam and the Blight, any one of them could have been testing her spirit. The real worry - not of a threat, but a consequence - didn't need to factor into the equation. Lucanis didn't need it adding to his share of their stress before he left, and Rook would have a much better idea of the situation by the time he got back. Besides— "I was going to ask the same about you two, actually. Spite's… aura?" She was never sure that was the right word, although she was certain Emmrich had told her once. "Whatever it is. Spite feels a little agitated, to me. Is it the mission?"
"A contract inviolable." Spite spoke to Rook directly, purpling Lucanis' gaze, although she got the sense he was quoting someone else's words. The former First Talon's? His distaste twisted his host's features, and Rook soothed him with a stroke of her thumb along the back of his hand. "Last time. In Treviso…"
Last time they'd all been in Treviso had been a revelation. Rook had shared more of her past than she ever had, even with those who had known her then. Together, they'd played at what the future might look like. Together, they'd reached new levels of intimacy and affection, forming the shape of what they had, in twos and as three. Spite had devoured all evidence of the very act which now plagued her internal peace, and if he was worried about going their separate ways, then—
"Spite?" Rook caught his attention quickly, while Bellara was distracted with a large wheel of cheese. "Kiss me."
The end of the world made her bold. While Rook's command was quiet, it was met without question. Her favourite demon bristled with the same charged energy she felt when he unfurled his wings, though he stayed solid, stayed Lucanis, as his lips locked with hers. If Bellara did look their way - and she wouldn't, hyper-focused on her task - it was unlikely she'd notice anything… 'amiss'. Even in Tevinter, even beyond the reaches of the Southern Chantry, humans and demons didn't normally do this. But she needed it, before they parted. Needed to take and give reassurance in turn, for whatever they all had ahead. Spite nipped her, aware somehow that her thoughts were drifting, darkening, and the kiss shifted. Rook and her rogue, with a molten gaze and his hand cupped below the curve of backside.
"Ay—" Lucanis began to complain, but he wasn't complaining, not really. Not if the way he resumed the kiss had anything to say about it. Bellara might not consider them so sweet now, all tongues and heat and bodies pressing close enough to merge. It seemed it pained him to break apart when, alas, time demanded it, and he shook his head with a sigh. He met Rook's kiss-drunk expression with hardened eyes and the small, half-smile that meant however he felt about what needed to be done, she wouldn't see him again until it had been. Had he looked at Teia, Illario, the same way before that fateful voyage to end Calivan? Maker, may he not be lost a year this time… although she would at least have an answer to their conundrum by then, one way or another. Blood, or babe in arms. Mierda. She flashed Lucanis the matching smile that between them made a whole. She needed some fresh air, away from the Fade, and she'd get some soon.
"Don't be too long," she encouraged him, "and don't do anything I wouldn't do."
It was sensible advice, but it earned her a chuckle and the fondest squeeze of her arm.
"Oh trust me," said Lucanis, "I'll bear that in mind."
~
A further three days, and Rook's worries had begun to persist even outside the Lighthouse. A sensation churned low in her gut that could as well herald a bleed as the prolonged absence thereof, and it was that ambiguity, the uncertainty, that was killing her. The fact she was back in Treviso, the site of their one-time indiscretion, probably didn't help - but there was a reason for that. She was there to see Teia, the Talon she could trust most when the First was occupied. Teia, who was perhaps, if not complicit in the act that had gotten them there, closest to understanding Rook's situation, the peculiar power play of Crow romance that she had to navigate just as carefully as any Venatori plot. And recent history spoke to how well she'd handled that, alone, didn't it? She needed a friend, and in Teia she had one. Still, she was anxious, and that sat with her even worse than the cramp.
Making her way not to the casino, nor Cafe Pietra, but a private salon recommended by Teia herself, it struck Rook that anxiety on the whole was new to her. She was scarred by the past, yes, but not generally scared of the future. For all their years together, she had never inherited her adopted mother's proclivity for worry, as some of her siblings had. Yet what about her relationship with Lucanis wasn't new? From the moment she'd rescued him, demon-bound, from beneath the sea, to letting him spill himself inside her in what could one day become their marital bed— Maker, she wouldn't phrase it that way if Teia pressed her for details. But the point stood. Everything was new, and if everything was new, then feeling so… differently should have been no surprise at all. Though she hated herself for surfacing his memory now, Rook knew she'd never worried with Arlo. They'd never risked anything worth worrying about - but if they ever had, she'd have been off to the nearest apothecary mage before the sheets were dry. No thank you, sir. She simply hadn't cared for him, for them as a couple, as she did with Lucanis, and Spite. It hadn't been love. Of course things were different.
Maybe, Rook thought as she neared her destination, it helped to see worry as the opposite face of their romance, the stamped side of the tessera as it were. Maybe it meant something that she was scared about a specific - wanted, encouraged - future when the Veil was in peril, Treviso was under occupation, and the old gods' chaos reigned. Maybe… But maybe it meant she was overdue cake just as much as a purge, and all she needed was the confection she clutched in her hand to feel better. That was the simplest answer, and one she could test soon enough. Arriving at a small, weathered but well-maintained door, she rapped smartly on the wood.
"Rook, for Andarateia?" she asked the young servant who appeared in a flash, all mobcap and effusive curls, the colour of a boiled chestnut.
"Si. Si, señora," the girl curtseyed and ushered her inside, offering her hand for Rook's sword belt and duster vest. "Siga todo recto y—"
"Rook!" called Teia from the end of the short hallway. "Ay, chiquitina. Te dije ella no hablo lengua vida. Come through, come through. It's so nice to see you when there's no emergency."
~
The room Teia had acquired was quiet, defensible. It reminded Rook, as luck or misfortune would have it, of their pantry back at the Lighthouse. It prompted her to hand over the cakes, packaged in a cut square of burlap: round, palm-sized turnovers stuffed with dried forest fruit, nuts and sugar.
"Bellara made a whole batch of them," Rook explained, before her host attempted to give her any credit. "Honestly, it's a dice roll when she's on desserts. She's the kind of baker who tweaks recipes as she goes then forgets what worked and what didn't, but these smelled great when she was baking, so…"
"It's a kind gift, Rook," said the Crow. "What do you suggest to pair with them? Coffee, wine, something stronger?"
"Tea, actually. If you promise not to tell Lucanis I suggested it."
Teia smiled, something fond in her deep, brown eyes that Rook shied away from, busying herself with the pastries, making space for the summoned tetera. It was one thing to need a friend, and another to be comfortable with having one - truly - after years of being fairly stubbornly alone. Shadow Dragons as colleagues and temporary companions, but not—
"You miss him," said Teia, unprompted. Rook made a noise in her throat, returned her gaze in a way which encouraged her to continue. "There's a waiter serving two doors down. Every time you hear him talk in the hall, your ears prick up sharper than mine. Antivan male, Treviso born. A little younger than Lucanis, but similar enough through a couple of layers of plaster and wood."
Rook briefly considered that she ought to learn to recognise a Salle accent, all the better to tease Teia with should their situation be reversed. As it was, she and Viago had hardly been apart from one another long enough to miss, in recent months, and Rook knew the observation wasn't made with malicious intent. She forced a smile to her lips which felt sad more than anything.
"I've always been a little better at stabbing than masking," she admitted. There was a reason she cheated at cards. "I do miss him. It's strange. This is probably the longest we've been apart, and right when— I mean, after—"
"It was a lovely Chantry service," said Teia. She poured the steeped tea into their cups. It seemed unreal that it had happened, a bright spot of normality among… everything else. The Seventh Talon was insightful but she didn't - couldn't - know everything. She doubtless thought it had been a nice moment, a reprieve from all Rook fought, and it had but…
"Teia?"
"Si, querida? You want sugar?"
Rook shook her head. "No. I… Lucanis told me what you said to him, at the party, and you know I spoke to Viago—"
"Oh, Vi was too tough with you. If he—"
"If we… actually did what you were suggesting, and, uhm…" For all they'd said they wouldn't tell the Talons about taking their advice to heart, for a brief moment Rook had considered honesty the best policy, until it got stuck in her throat. The pause stretched. Teia blinked.
She shrieked.
"Rook?! Por la sangre del Hacedor. Oh my goodness. Oh fuck." She took a deep, steadying breath which brought calm for all of two seconds before her eyes flickered from Rook's face to her tormented stomach and back again. "Are you pregnant?!" The last word was hissed low, as she gestured to her own uterus for emphasis.
Rook felt the heat rise to her face first as she attempted to process a response to Teia's questions, and again when the Crow lied through bared but smiling teeth at the parlour staff who came to inspect the commotion. She bit into a cake and tried to match the facial progression of the ensuing conversation, little as she understood the words. She hoped it was positive, leaving a moment or two of Teia's silent stare after the waitress had left before crumbling again.
"Honestly, I don't know. I'm late. Later than I've ever been." Rook chases the pastry crumbs down with mild tea. "We… got a little carried away at the villa, after the chantry blessing. It was one time."
"One time is all it takes, Rook." Teia spoke not with admonishment but fact. Wheels turned behind her gaze as the Crow counted something out on her fingers then shook her head. There was a pause. "Lucanis doesn't know, does he? You told me first."
Rook sighed. A cramp niggled beside her hip scar, punishing the already tight flesh. "I wanted to know myself," she said. "There's still time before it becomes a problem and I know things are… complicated."
"You're telling me." The reasons didn't need expanding upon. Teia took another cake and ate it in silence. Eventually, she shook her coal-black curls. Wherever she'd gone in her thoughts, she was back in the room with Rook, focused deeply on Rook, sharp and serious and sincere as a blade offered handle-first. "What do you want from me?" she asked. "You want to know where to go, who to speak to? A Reverend Mother? No, wait— With Lucanis' mission, that won't work. Poisons aren't my specialty but—"
"No, no need for anything like that," Rook assured her, especially if it meant getting Viago involved. One Talon holding her confidence she could deal with; two seemed like a recipe for disaster. Hi, your boss may have knocked me up so any chance of a tonic? She'd never live it down. "Honestly, I needed a friend, someone to speak this all out loud to. Thank you, and sorry there was kind of an emergency involved again…"
Teia laughed prettily. "Rook. Aradia. There's no need to apologise. Women like us don't live life without drama, and it's better that way, no? It's good to have a little gossip, and your trust. Lucanis will be back soon, I'm sure, and by then the way forward should be clearer. If he finds what he's looking for…" But she wouldn't say more.
The afternoon sun filtered through the mullioned window like liquid gold, making what little was left of Rook's tea shine in its porcelain cup. She drained it and picked at the last of her pastry crumbs, feeling if not exactly better then at leasr heard and supported. She reached out a hand and Teia squeezed it, palm calloused from years of brutal work, but nails buffed a sweet almond shape.
"The thank you stands, even if the apology is denied. Muchas gracias," a poor but sincere attempt at day-to-day Antivan. I know Treviso, the Crows, have trouble enough without—"
"Muchas gracias a ti, Rook." Teia cut her off with a smile. Every Crow house, Treviso, owes you its thanks. Whatever's happening abajo…"
"We'll face it together," Rook agreed. "Besides… we would make good babies."
"Oh, Rook." Teia laughed. "You would. You would!"